This month Naxos is proud to present the first classical album from
Tony Banks, founding member of Genesis, the progressive rock group that
soared to worldwide fame in the 1970s and 1980s.
Genesis-music.com recently interviewed Tony about his new album, which
is now available in the UK and coming to US stores on April 20.
Read excerpts from the interview below.When did you start writing music
for your new album 'Seven'?About 22 years ago. I used a
piece that I had written just after The
Wicked Lady. There
really started this particular project about four or five years ago
after the "Calling All Stations" tour ended. I was just writing lots of
stuff as usual and I came up with this piece which I did on the string
synth, and I thought it would be really nice to see how it sounded with
a real orchestra as opposed to doing it artificially as I normally do
it. And from there it was a decision to do a whole album that way and I
wrote the rest of the pieces to go with that. So I used the piece from
20 years ago and another [from] about the time of Strictly Inc. which we didn't use
at the time, but the bulk of the album was written in the last four or
five years. The most recent piece was probably written about a year and
a half ago when I decided I needed a slightly up-tempo piece.

So
originally it started out as a test run to see what it [would] sound
like with an orchestra?Well, a bit I suppose. But
when I had written all the pieces I knew that I wanted to do the whole
thing this way. By the time I had worked with Simon Hale, the
orchestrator on this, I knew the pieces could work. I had done about
four pieces at this stage and I went into the studio and recorded these
four pieces . . . It was such a strange process having worked for years
with the group where it took three months to make an album whereas
[with an orchestra] if after three hours you didn't have ten minutes of
music you had failed . . . . A couple of pieces sounded all right but
nothing sounded great . . . . I really had to think about how I was
going to do it to make it work, if I was going to do it at all.

So how did the
discipline of having to think in terms of an orchestra affect the way
you wrote the material?

Well, you know that there are certain
things that orchestras don't quite do the same as a group, but I'm
quite comfortable writing in that sort of way. I listen to a lot of
classical music and I love [the] sound of an orchestra . . . I didn't
want it to sound like rock music arranged for an orchestra . . .

What about the
process of recording? Were all the pieces demoed and given to Simon
Hale to orchestrate?

I did do a demo of every piece and
some of them were pretty detailed, and I went through them with Simon
and we'd talk about it. He'd have some ideas and we'd meet again
and I would say yes or I would say no. It was very important to me that
the result which you hear is me and not Simon . . . Every major thing
you hear is me, but he did do some lovely things with the arrangement
to enhance it. He understands an orchestra in a way that I probably
didn't have the confidence to do. I think I could probably have done a
couple of pieces but there are things that come as second nature to
someone who has had that sort of training that wouldn't occur to me . .
.What was the most
satisfying part of the process?

When things come together and you
think, "That really sounds good", which happened on most of the pieces
at some point . . . those moments that really work and you hear them
back with the whole orchestra. It's such a lovely sound with a whole
orchestra.If you were asked
to place this music into some sort of context reflecting your
influences, what would you say you have drawn upon that has influenced
this music?

Well, the classical composers I have
listened to over the years. I think I can detect a little bit of the
English composers like Vaughan Williams and Elgar . . . But the way the
harmonies change is very much me. But you are always influenced by
others, even in Genesis. Pianistically within Genesis I was influenced
by some of the piano players like Rachmaninov and Ravel. I took those
sorts of styles into the rock world and it worked quite well,
particularly Rachmaninov because it is quite rhythmic. Some of that
comes through in Seven, I
suppose. Then there are some Mahler-esque moments. I don't know…
Sibelius? But a lot of it, people say it's very English.

How important was
classical music in terms of your development?

As a child my mother used to play
classical music. She was a good pianist. She played a lot of Chopin and
that was quite a strong influence. I've always liked classical music,
the standard pieces like Ravel's Bolero
or [Holst's] The Planets
which I heard when I was a child. When I was in my teens I got into
things like Shostakovich and Mahler. I loved pop music in the sixties
but I got more and more disillusioned, probably because I was playing
it. You get fewer surprises, you know how it is all done. I found I got
more and more into classical music, so I've listened to a lot. But I've
always liked both.